The building at 37 Greve von Essens väg turned out to be a small pink palace on a low hillock on the edge of the Gärdet park. It was ordinarily an idyllic, secluded spot – almost straight from the pages of a fairy tale. It was usually rented out for weddings and celebrations, but when it wasn’t being used, it was a very out-of-the-way place, free from prying eyes. Right now, it felt far from idyllic.
They’d had to act fast. There had been no time to secure proper backup. Her colleague Sonja had lent Sara a headscarf to conceal her increasingly flame-red hair. She was counting on the people they encountered not being experts in the dress code of the Church of the Ascension. And it would presumably enhance the impression of an oppressed daughter. Roger Nordlund had agreed to play the angry father. He was a legend in the force who had always led the charge completely fearlessly whatever the context and had then been promoted to head up the flying squad and personal protection unit. Now, however, he had been promoted well past his comfort zone to the rank of superintendent and a working life filled with meetings and negotiations. He was over the moon to step into a tight spot. His big beard and shaved head were a good match with the image of a dominant patriarch in a free church. The fact that Roger was one hundred and fifty kilos of muscle who easily bench-pressed two hundred kilos didn’t do any harm. As a police superintendent, he always had a suit and tie waiting in his office for entertaining, and these were put to good use now.
As they sped through the city at ninety kilometres an hour, Sara told Roger everything. About the bodies in Lake Mälaren, about Nadia and Cesar and what they knew about the peepshow. She gave him Abeba’s father’s mobile in case he had to prove his identity. She called Anna, connected her wireless earbuds and attached them to her clothing so that Anna could hear everything that was happening. And she turned on ‘Find My iPhone’ so that she could see where they were. But the first order of business was to try and have a patrol car standing by close to Gärdet.
‘Tell them Nordlund says hello,’ Roger said cheerily to Anna, and Sara was convinced it would make all the difference. Now she felt safe.
Sara knew that if she had asked Bielke for permission to take Abeba’s place, he would have refused. He would never have agreed to a police officer risking her life that way, not even if it was the only way to find the peepshow. But once Sara was at a location where lives were at stake, then he would naturally send backup.
The only weak point in the plan was that they couldn’t be sure how quickly backup would be on the scene.
When they reached the small fairy-tale palace, they got out of the car that Sara had borrowed from the police motor pool – a highly anonymous Skoda. Roger grasped Sara’s shoulder with his hand to give the impression of a man controlling his subordinate daughter.
They were met by two square-shouldered men with blank expressions and cheap leather jackets, one with a crew cut with a small spot of hair left on top, the other with his head completely shaved. Behind them was a black BMW X5 with the doors open and the engine running. The men each held up a black fabric bag and Roger bent his head forward and let them put the hood over it. Sara did the same and hoped they wouldn’t decide to tie her up.
She guessed that the same men who met the peepshow participants then got rid of the bodies, in which case the two who had met Ndeme when he had brought them Cesar were dead – shot after trying to dump Cesar’s body in Mälaren. The whole set-up depended on it.
But with a hood over her face, the fear that these men were the same ones who had met Ndeme and Cesar grew. It would mean that they knew Roger wasn’t Ndeme, and that they would therefore drive them to a remote spot and execute them. With the hoods on, they wouldn’t have a clue what was going on.
They were led into the waiting car, which then pulled away.
Sara wondered how it had worked when they had snatched Cesar. Ndeme would obviously never have got him to come here. Had Cesar seen Ndeme by the church and realised what was happening? Or had the goons taken him by surprise and beaten him unconscious? Had Cesar thought that it was Abeba who had lured him into the trap? It was quite possible. Perhaps he had died thinking she had helped her father.
If their destination was Frihamnen, then the two men who drove them felt no need to disorient them by taking the long way. After a journey of just a few minutes the car stopped. Sara heard the sound of a large iron gate gliding aside and then the car drove for another few seconds before stopping. The front doors opened, then the back doors, and Sara and Roger were led out.
Sara tried to visualise what she was hearing. A large door being opened, the sound of footsteps on concrete, sudden beeping and then strong hands running over her body.
‘A gun!’ exclaimed a voice in heavily accented English a few steps away from Sara.
There was the sound of rapid feet and bodies jostling about.
‘It’s for her!’ Roger yelled at last.
‘For her?’
‘Yes. I want to use it on her!’
A good excuse from Roger, Sara thought to herself while waiting nervously to see how the lie was taken.
A brief pause and then a curt laugh.
‘We give you gun.’
A metallic sound – probably Roger’s pistol being thrown away.
Then they were led forward a few metres through what sounded – judging by the echoes – like a fairly narrow corridor with a concrete floor. And then they stopped and heard a heavy door closing behind them.
‘Take off his,’ said one of the voices.
‘Thank you,’ said Roger.
Someone grabbed Sara’s hands.
‘No, it’s OK,’ said Roger. ‘No cuffs.’
‘Yes,’ said the voice, bringing Sara’s hands together behind her back.
‘Sara, let’s go!’ Roger shouted at the same time as the black hood was pulled off her head. She saw that it was Roger who had pulled it off, and then he turned quickly and floored the man next to him with a quick right hook. Sara tugged her hands free, turned around and grabbed the man behind her around the neck. She drove her knee into his diaphragm three times and then once into his face. He collapsed to the floor unconscious.
Roger frisked the men and took their guns, a Beretta 9000 and a Taurus 9mm, handing one to Sara. She looked around. They were standing in a small room of no more than six or seven square metres, with black walls, a door at one end and a window with a blind across it at the other.
‘One of the booths,’ Sara said.
‘So this is where they sit and watch.’
Sara picked up a laminated sheet with a picture of a bound, naked girl on it. It outlined a menu of choices.
‘Solo show SEK 3,000. Couple SEK 5,000. Gang bang SEK 10,000. Sadistic SEK 50,000. Brutal SEK 100,000. Snuff SEK 250,000. DIY SEK 200,000.’
A price list for assault, rape and murder.
Sara was close to throwing up.
‘What do we do?’
‘Wait for Anna and the cavalry to arrive,’ said Roger. ‘We’ve got no idea how many of them there are out there. Or how they’re armed.’
‘Can we raise this?’ said Sara, going over to the covered window.
‘Probably not if we don’t pay.’
‘Sara!’ Anna’s voice was just faintly audible now that Sara’s earbud was down at her waist. ‘Hello?!’ she shouted again.
‘Yes?’ said Sara, putting the bud in her ear.
‘Jesus, it’s a relief to hear your voice. I thought something had happened.’
‘All OK so far. But we could do with your help now.’
‘Can’t!’ Anna’s voice was almost panicky.
‘What?’
‘We can’t. You’re on international soil.’
‘No, we’re in the Frihamnen.’
‘Yes, but it’s some kind of customs-free zone for ships to other countries. You’re in Warehouse 7, and that’s international soil. We’re not allowed in there!’
‘For fuck’s sake, two police officers are in danger! Not to mention the people who are going to be subjected to a peepshow.’
‘We’ve called Customs, but they want assurances that the operation won’t pose any danger to their staff.’
‘Of course it bloody will! Everyone is armed to the teeth in this place.’
‘Then they’ll never go in. Can you stay out of the way until it’s over?’
Sara and Roger looked around the small booth.
‘Probably. If we put our small gorillas back to sleep every time they come round.’
A wild scream from the other side of the glass window interrupted them.
Sara looked Roger in the eye. She got a nod in response.
That was all it took. Roger quickly set one chair half a metre from the window, backed up a couple of metres and then ran towards the window, leapt up onto the chair and hurled his one hundred and fifty kilos straight through the blind. Smashed glass flew everywhere.
Roger was immediately on his feet on the other side, just as Sara jumped in after him.
It was a large room with black walls and a series of windows in an octagonal ring around them. Four of the windows had their blinds raised. In the centre there was a brightly lit table with straps and a bloodied body writhing in torment.
‘Police!’ Roger shouted.
‘International area!’ protested one of the men by the illuminated table.
‘So what?’
Before anyone in the room had time to react to his spectacular entrance, Roger reached the two knife-wielding men by the table and punched one of them in the jaw before sweeping round and kicking the other in the temple.
Now the guards finally began to realise that something out of the ordinary was happening.
Sara saw them raise their automatic weapons and step towards Roger.
But by the time she had raised her own pistol to fire, Roger had felled both gorillas with a shot in the knee for each.
They fell, bellowing, to the floor, and Sara hurried over and tore their weapons from their hands.
She scanned the area but saw no one else.
Two down by the table, two shot on the floor, and the two they had taken out in their booth. It was entirely possible that six men might be the full complement.
Roger checked how the strapped-down man was doing.
‘He’ll make it,’ he said. ‘But it’s not pretty.’
Only now did Sara’s thoughts turn to the four booths that had their blinds up. The dark windows revealed nothing about who was behind them. She raised one of the automatic weapons and took aim at a window.
‘Look out!’ she shouted before firing straight through the glass.
The same with the next one, and the one after that, and the one after.
For each window that Sara shot to pieces, Roger jumped in and yanked the person sitting in there out. Two of the booths were empty. The peepers had fled from those. However her colleague was able to drag several surprised and frightened men out of the other two booths – they still didn’t seem to entirely understand what was happening.
Sara stood guard while Roger rounded up all the conquered thugs. Then she took Ndeme’s mobile and called the number he had been texting about the peepshow. The inside pocket of the man with the shaved head who had met them at Gärdet began to ring. Sara went over and took the phone. It probably contained all sorts of numbers that might come in useful.
Then Roger took over guard duty while Sara looked around the space and spoke to Anna again.
‘Police officers attacked with automatic weapons,’ she said. ‘Who bloody cares whether this is an international area? Send in backup.’
‘Sorry. Bielke’s absolutely furious. You need to get out of there. And leave everyone behind.’
Sara looked at the poor man strapped to the table. He wasn’t conscious, but Roger was probably right that they had intervened in the nick of time. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to save Nadia or any of the girls whose suffering had entertained paying headcases.
The floor around the table was covered in dark stains and the air stank of a suffocating mixture of blood and semen.
Sara took a final lap of the room and found a black door between two of the windows. She opened it and found some kind of office with a big A4 calendar with notes on it about which victims and treatments the peepshow had to offer.
There was a computer on the desk, and when Sara tapped the space bar it was apparent it was password protected.
But the wallpaper showed something that shocked her deeply.
It was a selfie of several of the men they had just encountered, taken in one of the booths.
In the background, on the other side of the window, Sara was able to make out a naked woman’s body strapped to the table in the peepshow – a brunette who very much resembled Jenna.
But what shook Sara to her core was the person standing between the guards grinning broadly.
Uncle Scam.